Bill Turnbull, 63, reacted to BBC star Deborah James’ health update after she revealed she had been told she was cancer free. The presenter, who hosts Radio 5 Live’s You, Me & The Big C podcast, was diagnosed with an incurable form of the disease in 2016.
Deborah informed her 91,000 Instagram followers that after intense treatment including surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy, she and her medical team are “rewriting the text book”.
The radio personality shared a snap of herself posing in a black swimsuit on a beach and explained in a lengthy caption: “Ok Cancer – you chose the wrong girl. 3 Years on, 10 operations, too many scans, a lot of chemo, some fancy drugs, lots of tears… I’m still standing.
“And you (according to my most recent scans!) are still sleeping! In fact, we have cut you out, burnt you, zapped you, ablated you, used radiotherapy, used targeted therapy, used every tool in the book and right now in fact according to my team we are ‘rewriting the text book!’.”
Admitting it was a “bit bonkers”, she continued: “I have no evidence of cancer in my body, which seems bonkers considering at one stage I had 15 tumours!”
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“I said to Sesi the other day, ‘I wish just once I could get up and not think about it.’
“But if I’m feeling good I don’t think about it much. And there are displacement activities.”
Bill opened up about his diagnosis in Channel 4 documentary Bill Turnbull: Staying Alive last year, where he sat down and spoke about living with the disease with his other half.
The couple became emotional as they discussed the cancer, with Bill calling his wife his “rock”.
